Educator Resources

Understatement Exercise

NCTE Standards: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12

(Notes for understatement appear at the end. Vera Laska's testimony can be obtained through The Central Arkansas Library System.)

  1. Anticipatory Set: Lecture based introduction (with notes) to understatement, litotes, and meiosis. Students will watch a brief clip of Vera Laska. Students will then find 3 understatements from the literature assigned.
  2. Objectives and purpose: The student will be able to identify understatement and explain how it is used by the author.
  3. Modeling: Give students the definition of understatement, meiosis, and litotes. Watch Vera Laska's testimony about her daring escape. She makes the statement to her friend, "So you had potatoes, I had freedom. So what?" (1:45:45- 1:47:35). Explain to students why this statement is considered understatement. Also, provide one or two examples for understatement that the students are familiar with. One obvious example is Mercutio's "a scratch, a scratch" after he is mortally wounded.
  4. Checking for Understanding: Break students into groups of two and have them write understatements that they use on a regular basis, along with the situation in which the understatement was used. Then, allow students to share out.

Definitions and Examples

Definitions *:

  • UNDERSTATEMENT — A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration.
  • MEIOSIS — From the Greek for "lessening," a trope employing deliberate understatement. Usually for comic, ironic, or satiric effect. Meiosis typically involves characterizing something in a way that, taken literally, minimizes its evident significance or gravity.
  • LITOTES — A type of meiosis, involves making an affirmative point by negating its opposite.

Examples of Understatement *:

  1. "Just a flesh wound" from Monty Python's The Holy Grail
  2. "Mistakes were made" Reagan — Iran-Contra
  3. "One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.
  4. From "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning:
    E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
    Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
    Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
    Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
    Then all smiles stopped together.     (ll 43-46)
    (Bolded lines are the understated lines).

Note: All definitions and first three examples from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, Third Edition.